tim Sweeny wrote:UNREAL SET FREEIn early 2014, we took the step of making Unreal Engine 4 available to everyone by subscription for $19 per month. We put all of our source code online, available to all who signed up. We flipped the switch and crossed our fingers.

The past year has been a whirlwind for everyone at Epic Games. Our community has grown tremendously. The quality and variety of creative work being done has been breathtaking. When we asked people to submit their projects to be shown this year at GDC, we had the challenge of picking just 8 from over 100 finalists that were all good enough to show.

The state of Unreal is strong, and we’ve realized that as we take away barriers, more people are able to fulfill their creative visions and shape the future of the medium we love. That’s why we’re taking away the last barrier to entry, and going free.

For developing with UE4, we recommend a desktop PC with Windows 7 64-bit or a Mac with Mac OS X 10.9.2 or later, 8 GB RAM and a quad-core Intel or AMD processor, and a DX11 compatible video card. UE4 will run on desktops and laptops below these recommendations, but performance may be limited.

Not too bad considering these are the RECOMMENDED specs and not the minimum specs for the engine.

sektor2111 wrote:Maybe Unreal Engine 4 is free but the computer to run such stuff is not free and neither very cheap...

True, but a computer that can run UE4 now is still cheaper then computer that could run UT99 well back in 1999! I could build a pc for about €450 that meets the recommended specs from new parts and if I where to look at the second hand market I could get that price down by a good bit. Is €450 still a lot of money? Yes, but it's cheap for the performance you get.

Chamberly wrote:Tbh, I have no idea how this is such a hype. So.... will it be backward compatible with UT99/Unreal? Or allow thing to work for UT99/Unreal?

Because UE4 is now free* to use! Would this allow us to "upgrade" unreal/ut99? Not really, but it does allow you to use UE4 to do whatever the hell you want with it!

Frankly I never understand the complaints against brand new tech needing higher system requirements. This is cutting edge; UE4 is the absolute latest and I think the requisites are reasonable. There is no hardware in those recommended specs that is newer than 5 years old. Sandy Bridge (overclocked, still a fine CPU), DX11 graphics ( most every card since 2010/11), RAM is very cheap these days (8GB for around $60), Win7x64...all pretty old stuff really.

Painful specs would be an i7, Win 8.1, 16GB DDR4 RAM (yes, I know...just saying) and 3GB VRAM. Now that would be steep.